As part of CNN’s ongoing series on gender inequality, As Equals, CNN takes a look at gender-based violence in Kenya through the lens of female officers working at gender desks who themselves might be victims. With public trust in the police broken, it is ever more difficult for women to report harassment.
CNN met with Roy Wanyonyi, who recalls the loss of his daughter, Tiffany, in Webuye, an industrial town in western Kenya a little over a year ago.
Like her father, Tiffany was a police officer. She was stationed in the capital, Nairobi, where she lived with her two children. In March 2024, after her grandmother passed away, Tiffany returned to her childhood home to attend the funeral. After the service, Tiffany appeared in good spirits, reminiscing about her grandmother’s long life before leaving the gathering with her husband.
She never made it back to Nairobi.
The next morning, Wanyonyi woke up to the most devastating phone call of his life. It was the local police commander: Tiffany had been murdered.
“My head just went dizzy,” Wanyonyi told CNN. “I didn’t believe…” he added, struggling to find the words to describe his shock, even now.
Last year was the deadliest for women in Kenya, with 170 reported killed (including 127 murders labeled as femicides), according to Africa Data Hub in partnership with Odipodev and Africa Uncensored, which analyzed news reports and court records going back almost a decade.
Already, 2025 is shaping up to be just as deadly. Between January and March 2025 alone, 129 women were killed according to Kenya’s National Police Service, local media reported. The police service wouldn’t confirm this figure or previous years to CNN and campaigners have argued a lack of centralized data is part of the problem in tackling femicide.
The violence is so pervasive that several police officers working on “gender desks” – a special unit established a decade ago to address Kenya’s gender-based violence – told CNN of female colleagues who had been victims of gender-based violence themselves. Such officers are often silenced by stigma, burdened by trauma and failed by the very system they serve, according to experts and female police officers who spoke to CNN.
